Advancements have occurred in recent years for robotic exoskeletons for lower extremities to restore ambulation that has been impaired or lost due to paraplegia as a result of, for example, spinal cord injury (SCI). In particular, exemplary systems have been commercialized to the extent that they are undergoing clinical trials and user evaluations including such systems from, for example, Ekso Bionics Holdings, Inc. of Richmond, Calif., ReWalk Robotics Ltd. of Yokneam Bit, Israel, and Rex Bionics Ltd. of Auckland, New Zealand.
However, current exoskeletons are software controlled to provide a preprogrammed gait for mobility with little wearer, i.e., user, control other than to initiate or stop mobility, including such systems disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 8,348,875, U.S. Patent Appln. Publn. No. 2013/0158445 and Y. Hasegawa and K. Kakayama, “Finger-Mounted Walk Controller of Powered Exoskeleton for Paraplegic Patient's Walk,” World Automation Congress Conference, Aug. 3-7, 2014. Such current systems fail to provide the user or wearer with any control of the length or amplitude and frequency of the stride, gait and overall speed of walking. Instead, current systems only provide the ability to initiate or stop the mobility provided by the preprogrammed gait. Therefore, walking with current exoskeletons is an automated process with little or no actual user control.
As a consequence, current lower extremity exoskeletons do not succeed in providing independent ambulation for disabled individuals due to their lack of user control. The expense and training required for current devices, therefore, has not been fully justified.
Moreover, current exoskeletons fail to provide adequate and convenient safety and operational states to enable mobility based upon a user-controlled gait operation where user inputs only cause mobility when such user in a position that such mobility would not cause a potential fall or harm to the user.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art for an exoskeleton having safety and operational states and enabling a user-controlled gait operation only when such user-controlled gait operation would not cause a potential fall or harm to the user.